The game of chess has really grown for the last couple of months. All thanks to the Netflix series The Queens Gambit. Therefore, we like to take a step back and write an easy starters guide to how the different pieces move and what they are good at. We hope that you will find this guide helpful.
There are 6 pieces or characters in the game of chess. Each side has 8 pawns, 2 rooks, one knight, one king and one queen. Let us look at their roles in the game one by one.
Pawn
A pawn is said to be one of those pieces on the chess board that has the minimum value. If we talk about its movement, then it could move in a single direction and one space at a time. There are special conditions in which it could move to two spaces and that comes for once in the whole game. Apart from that, it could move diagonally too. This too is done in the special case only. When we see that there is piece from the opponent side at the diagonal space besides a pawn, it could capture that.
Rook
As we mentioned earlier also, there are two rooks at each side of the chess board. Rook is considered to be the most powerful piece. It could move in any direction, except diagonally. You could move it towards, left, right, back and front. The condition for it is that it should not be restricted by any piece of the opponent. When it comes to the endgame and the final castling takes place, it is rook that serves a major purpose. At this time, one could move the king and rook together. Thus, two pieces could be moved at a time in such situations.
Knight
You will find two knights in a particular team. This piece is regarded as the favourite piece of the players, because of the features that it has. It always moves 2 and half space. Most of the beginners, do not understand this. In simple words, the knight moves in L form, two steps forward and one space in the right. The importance of knight could be understood by the fact that, most of the times a tactic played with the piece of knight is proven to be a game turner.
Bishop
For a beginner, there is no importance of a bishop piece. The fact that lies behind it is that, they are considered to be the game changers and are used at the end of the game, mostly. You could use a Bishop piece in defending the King. If we talk about the movements of this particular piece, then it moves in a diagonal direction, until another piece comes in its way.
Queen
The basic strategy behind the game of queen is that, it should be saved for later, as it could move in any direction. Good players try and bring their queen to the centre, in order to defend that particular space.
King
This piece is the most important piece of the chess board, as the whole game revolves around it. If your king is safe at the end of the game, you are the winner, if not then you lost the game. It could move in any direction, but just one space. One should always remember that, a king could not be placed at the point that could put it into the check mate position.
So, these are all the pieces and their roles, in an elaborated manner. If a person does not know about them, he could not probably play the game properly. The large increase of interest in this game among all types of people has resulted in chess showing up in different ways lately. New gaming sites offer online chess, new online casinos offer slot games and such featuring chess, and much, much more. We certainly hope that this new-born interest in the game will continue.